Justice League The New Frontier Special Edition Blu ray

Inspired by the best-selling graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke and produced by the multiple Emmy® award winning animation legend, Bruce Timm, The New Frontier is the epic tale of the founding of the Justice League. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are all here of course, and so are Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Flash - whose incredible origins will be told for the very first time. Strangers at first, these very different heroes must overcome fear and suspicion to forge an alliance against a monster so formidable, even the mighty Superman can not stop it. If they fail, our entire planet will be ?€œcleansed?€ of humanity.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars A wonderful New Frontier
To be honest, I was a bit skeptical going into this. Warner's last direct-to-DVD animated release, "Superman: Doomsday", left me a little cold. It had fast forwarded the story into overdrive to cram it into 75 minutes. There seemed to be so much more they could do with it. And I didn't find the voice cast to be all that great.

Now along comes their second foray, and they certainly learned a whole lot between the two. "Justice League: The New Frontier" is retro. There is violence, both implied and seen, which should probably keep this away from children's eyes.

The setting is post-Korean War America. Superhero types have been forced to sign a loyalty oath. The government in in the throws of McCarthy-ism, and some of the heroes are questioning their choices

Along comes fighter pilot Hal Jordan (David Boreanaz). After avoiding killing during the war, he ends up in a mental hospital and then is hired as a test pilot. When the world is in danger, he finds that his destiny lies beyond what he could have imagined.

This story is basically a dual origin tale. Giving us a quick take on the beginnings of J'onn J'onzz, The Martian Manhunter (complete with some fun cameos from the Warner library). More involved is the transformation of Hal Jordan into Earth's member of the Green Lantern Corp.

The animation, blending traditional and computer styles, is top notch. There are little subtleties in style and dialogue that help set the period very nicely. Lucy Lawless' take on Wonder Woman, and Boreanaz as Jordan/Lantern are the voice cast stand outs. The only one that stood out as a questionable choice for me was Jeremy Sisto as Batman. It just never clicked for me.

The special edition and Blu-ray versions include 3 episodes from Cartoon Network's excellent "Justice League: Unlimited" series which fill in the gaps on a couple of characters.

I'd like to see a continuation of this series on DVD exploring some of the other characters in more detail.

5 Stars I wanted it to be awesome, and it is
New Frontier is the 2nd DTV release from WB in this new line of DC Universe movies, the first being Superman Doomsday. Being a fan of the graphic, I was more than excited at the idea of watching it animated. The book is without a doubt one of the best examples of modern stuperhero story telling and the movie definitely does it justice.

Bruce Timm is behind this, just like practically every other DC superhero animated series of the past 10 plus years. Which is a good thing, he created quality stuff back then, and NF is no exception. The best decision they made here was choosing what to adapt, and getting Darwyn Cooke, the writer/artist of NF involved. Cooke and Timm had similar artistic styles so this resembles both the graphic novel artwork as well as the previous Justice League series.

As far as the voice talent go, no major complaints here. True to form, Timm enlists yet another Joss Whedon colaborator in David Boreanaz to voice Hal Jordan. I'm not a fan of him from his live action stuff but he's fine as Hal. Neil Patrick Harris is a no-brainer for Flash, and Miguel Ferrer brings a lot of depth to J'onn. The big three are all pretty standard and don't have much screen time. Jeremy Sisto's Batman works, but I don't know how I would have liked him if he had been the star of the movie.

Going into it, I already had a pretty good idea of what was going to be cut, and I was right. John Henry and his hammer was cut but that was a pretty easy descision. The Losers on Dinosuar Island? Gone. The Challengers of the Unknown are still in it, but we lose their backstory which was dissapointing but what can you do? I would have loved to see these scenes in there but they weren't that necessary to the overall plot, except a lot of backstory about Dinosaur Island which would have helped. A little explanation would have been appreciated, but you can never accuse this movie of being boring.

If you're a JL fan, you have to see this. It is essential for any DC Comics collection. Let's hope the quality doesn't slide with the highly anticipated Batman: Gotham Knight.

4 Stars The hype is true…
…this IS a very good comic book movie. So good that at least twice I inadvertently responded to it on a vocal level, forgetting that I was watching an animated film.

My primary concern was that it stayed true to the excellent comic upon which it was based and that it did. Of course its seventy-five minute running time couldn't provide the huge depth of story of the original comic but that didn't detract from my total enjoyment.

The voice work from all cast members is superb and the moment when Hal Jordan fully becomes Green Lantern is positively transcendent.

Good stuff and well worth the time to watch.

5 Stars Great Movie
First, I was shocked when I saw the suicide, then Hal blowing someones brains out, the SOB word mentioned twice and Wonder Woman simply allowing soldiers to be killed. She might as well have killed them herself since she was an accomplice to murder, right or wrong. Then I looked at the PG-13 rating and understood why. This is definately not a kids cartoon. It also reminded me of JL and JLU where the US government was secretly keeping tabs on the justice league and weren't completely trusted.

Anyway, this was really good and I really enjoyed the intro for Batman. Although it didn't explain why Batman was a renegade. Superman was taken out too quickly, I would have liked to see him fighting side by side with the other heavy hitters, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern. Overall, I enjoy almost all Justice League material. Has anyone heard of a real life Justice League with Roth Brandon and Christian Bale, etc.? I saw some stuff on youtube.

4 Stars Between the Golden and Silver Ages - A Nice Retcon
If you have a Blu-ray player - does this disc ever look good. Animation is ideally suited to High Definition. Just incredible looking. The acting/voice performances were excellent. I love the original cast and wouldn't change a thing, yet the new voices here all work quite well - another triumph for Andrea Romano's casting and voice direction talents.

Many others have spelled out the basic plot already so no need to go into that much more. The main villain is a bit weak even after hearing the explanation in the special features. That's about the only weakness in the script. I would say this movie is primarily a Green Lantern/Flash story — lots of great stuff from the old comics done well and many nice touches and fine polishes to many elements. It is a lot like the old JLA comic - all the characters in one place for the same price.

I can easily forgive the liberal leaning retcon elements of this story. The period between the golden and silver age of comics where the story takes place is ripe for new material. All of our comic heroes are creations of the times they were made. At the time of the Korean War, could Superman actually realize he was just a government tool? Or Batman change his style and look because Robin was now part of his life's responsibility? These are modern paradigms presented as vintage. But we all know that. The retcon is not offensive. It's part of the story the writer wanted to tell, and weaving the story in with JFK's "New Frontier" speech actually worked. And that was part of the point here. Something "dated" still directly applies to our modern world. JFK's truth still rings true today as if Obama had said it yesterday. Superheroes in the 1950's didn't comprehend as our hindsight allows us to, but since this is just a story it's okay that they apparently did all along.

I enjoyed this film. I thought it was written at a very adult level and that the comic book kids from 8-12 won't be able to appreciate it. I'm looking forward to more features from DC. I think this is a great trend to produce animated superhero features. I think the script could have been fleshed out a lot more, because a 74 minute movie is just not enough to tell the tale. It's loaded with small details but I'd have preferred if it was loaded with larger more developed details of all the characters. But what we got was still good and I'm grateful that such movies are being made at all.

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